I’m going to share with you why salespeople are losing the deals they’re losing, why the deals get stuck, why they can’t overcome objections, and why they don’t close. I’m going to share with you the number one reason that almost every problem you have when it comes to selling happens. This is the #1 most common sales mistake.
Too many of you are selling in an old school product-centric way and that product-centric approach actually creates 90% of the problems that sales trainings and traditional sales trainings are teaching you to address. I say don’t address the symptom address the root cause problem and that’s what I’m sharing with you right here. What I’m about to show you is how most of you are selling today and the minute you see it you’re going to realize why it’s causing you so many problems.
Look at how the sales world works in a traditional selling approach.
You’ve got the salesperson on one side with all the product knowledge. Then you have the buyer on the other with all the problem knowledge. In traditional selling, in most selling environments and in most sales trainings, they teach you to send that product knowledge over to the buyer.
When this happens, the buyer has everything.
The seller has nothing more to offer. This is why you end up getting stuck and why you don’t get anywhere – the buyer can take their time to mull it over. Once the buyer has the product knowledge, they’re not very inclined to give you the problem knowledge – they feel the job is done, the process is over, and they’ll get back to you when they’ve made a decision – on THEIR time. In a Problem-Centric or Gap Selling world this is a problem.
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What do we need to do instead?
The buyer has the problem knowledge and we, as sellers, want that information before we show our hand. We are not sending product knowledge over until after the buyer gives us the problem knowledge. Now, we are in the driver’s seat. Now, we have all the information – the buyer is waiting on us. They don’t know what their potential solutions are or what we are offering until we give it to them. The seller is now in control, the playing field has been leveled.
Now when we give them our recommendation around what the solution could be we are all in the same place moving forward.
That’s how you want to think about it. When you lead with your product right away you lose control, you’re in the cheap seats, you have no way to get them back when they inevitably go dark. And if they don’t go dark, you have no adequate way to address their objections, you have no way of challenging them. You’re left in the waiting game, a black hole.
Think about how often you find yourself thinking something’s going to close but it doesn’t.
You gave them all the product information and didn’t get enough problem information didn’t you? When I say problem information, I don’t mean just the problem, I mean the problem, root cause, the impact, I mean the GAP. We’re creating the very problems that we’re trying to avoid but being too product centric. Now, we’re reading sales books, we’re talking to the experts, we’re doing everything we can to fix the problem when we don’t have to try so hard.
You don’t have to try so hard to close, don’t have to worry about objections, don’t have to worry about pricing, none of it if you don’t send the product information first.
Stand your ground and learn to do a proper discovery, learn to ask the right questions, learn to diagnose the problem, impact, and root cause. Now you have all the information – the buyer is waiting on your recommendation or suggestion on what YOU think they should do. They start looking at you like a trusted advisor or consultant because they know you understand them and their problems. They’re waiting with bated breath for you to tell them what to do. That’s selling.
It’s time to change the way we sell. If you never learn another thing in your sales career, please let this one stick. Never send the product information before you get the problem information.
If you or your sales team need help improving your close rates or avoiding these common sales mistakes reach out to our sales team to learn more.
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